Susan Granger’s review of “It’s Complicated” (Universal Pictures)
If you’re in the mood for a masterful middle-aged romantic comedy, this is your ticket!
With their son graduating from college and their daughter planning her own nuptials, it’s inevitable that Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) keeps running into her ex, Jake (Alec Baldwin), who left her 10 years ago for an overtly aggressive, much-younger woman, Agness (Lake Bell), to whom he’s now married and stepfather to Pedro, her obnoxious five year-old son. In the intervening time, Jane’s built a successful bakery/restaurant in upscale Santa Barbara, California, and is enthusiastically preparing an extensive addition to her stunning Spanish hacienda-style home that’s now an ‘empty nest.’ After tentatively considering a touch of cosmetic surgery, she’s finally come to terms with being a divorcee. Until, one evening, she unexpectedly finds herself alone at a hotel in Manhattan with Jake. Wine flows, sparks of lust fly and, suddenly, Jane is “the other woman,” guiltily enjoying “smokin’ hot” sex.
“Fate brought us together once,” Jake insists. “Maybe it can happen again.”
Concealing this farcical, illicit situation frustrates and confuses their grown children (Caitlin Fitzgerald, Hunter Parrish, Zoe Kazan), prospective son-in-law (John Krasinski), and Jane’s current suitor, a recently divorced architect, Adam (Steve Martin), but it serves as fun-filled fodder for her gleeful girl-friends (Rita Wilson, Mary Kay Place, Nora Dunn, Alexandra Wentworth).
Writer/director Nancy Meyers (“Something’s Gotta Give,” “What Women Want”) blithely concocts a deliciously loony escapade, full of humor, heart and clever observations about intimate, adult relationships. While it eschews the obvious debauchery of Judd Apatow’s comedies, it’s discreetly raunchy enough for its intended audience, including a giggly pot-smoking interlude and a hilarious sequence in which Alec Baldwin inadvertently flashes his private parts on Skype.
After playing Julia Child in “Julie & Julia,” captivating Meryl Streep gamely continues her luscious food-fetish, whipping up some a veritable smorgasbord of tantalizing treats, while Baldwin revitalizes his big-screen career as a charismatic, if now-rotund Romeo. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “It’s Complicated” is a delightful 9, a glossy holiday confection that’s chock full of laughter.
